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THE 



Bryant Centennial 

A BOOK ABOUT A DAY 
1794*1894 




PRINTED AT THE PRESS OF THE BROTHERHOOD 
FOR THE PUBLISHER EARNEST ELMO CALKINS 
KNOX COLLEGE GALESBURG ILLINOIS MDCCCXCIV 



f^ii^i 






The publisher of The Bryant Centennial, Earnest Elmo 

Calkins, certifies that only two hundred and fifty 

copies of the book have been printed, 

each signed by Mr. John Howard 

Bryant, and that this is 

No. //O 




And now, amid the fading light, 
With faltering steps I journey on, 

Waiting the coming of the night, 
When earthly light and life are gone. 



Contents 



A Fore Word, 7 

A Monody, 11 

The Sentiment of the Day, 17 

William Cullen Bryant, 23 

Cummington, 25 

The Centennial Hymn, 31 

The Centennial Address, 35 

Letters and Tributes. 85 




H jfore morb 

^^^g^ HIS little book preserves the words spoken 
/ V at Galesburg-, Illinois, November 3, 1894, in 

m^ \ V celebration of the hundredth anniversary 
^■■^ of the birth of the poet, William Cnllen 
Bryant. If a reason were asked for celebrating- here 
on the prairies this day, no better answer could be 
given than that which Mr. Scudder sug-g-ests in his 
poetic note: 

"The sweep of the prairie * * and wide horizon belong to the 
spirit which sounds through his grave, yet impassioned verse;" 

or that of Mr. Field's appreciative message: 

"Bryant was so loyal a lover, so enthusiastic a student, and so 
accurate a reader and interpreter, of Nature, that I find it easy to 
associate him with Galesbtirg, its embowered homes, its venerable, 
hospitable trees, its shady walks and driveways, its billowy lawns, 
its exuberant gardens and its charming vistas. He would have 
loved that academic spot; he would have loved the people, too, for 
he would have found them gracious, appreciative and sympathetic 
in all those high and ennobling lines he always pursued." 



And then, too, not far from Knox College, under 
whose auspices the exercises were held, live the ven- 
erable brother of the poet, Mr. John Howard Bryant, 
himself a poet, and Mr. Edward R. Brown, the orator 
at the Cumming-ton celebration. The exercises were 
held in the "Old First Church," a historic "meeting- 
house" of the Mississippi Valley, Dr. Newton Bate- 
man, the distinguished President-emeritus of Knox 
College, presiding. The day was as beautiful as 
Autumn has ever seen, and a great audience was 
gathered. The description of Bryant's birthplace is 
from a paper upon the Cvimmington celebration, read 
at the Princeton celebration by Mr. Eugene C. Bates. 

This preface must speak, too, of the reading of 
"The Waterfowl," and "Thanatopsis," by Miss Cham- 
berlain; of the song, "Old Friends Are the Truest," 
by Mr. E. I^ester Brown, and of other musical selec- 
tions by Mrs. Marsh and Miss Jelliif. The rest of 
the day's exercises will be found within. 

This is a book about a day which will be long 
remembered here as one of the most wholesome, up- 
lifting days that Knox College has known. 

John H. Fini^ey 

Knox College, Galesburg, Illinois 
December 20, 1894 



,, m 




JOHN HOWARD BRYANT 

My heart to-day is far away; 

I seem to tread ray native hills; 
I see the flocks and mossy rocks, 

And hear the g-ush of mountain rills. 

There with me walks and kindly talks 
The dear, dear friend of all my years; 

We laid him low, not long- ago. 

At Roslyn-side, with sobs and tears. 

But though I know that this is so, 

I will not have it so to-day; 
The illusion still, by force of will, 

Shall give my wayward fancy play. 

With joy we roam around the home. 

Where in our childhood days we played; 

We tread the mead with verdure spread, 
And seek the woodpath's grateful shade. 



We climb the steep where fresh winds sweep, 
Where oft before our feet have trod, 

And look far forth, east, south and north, 
Upon the gflorious work of God. 

We tread again the rocky glen. 
Where foaming waters dash along, 

And sit alone on mossy stone, 

Charmed by the thrush's joyous song. 

Anon we stray, far, far away, 

The club-moss crumbling 'neath our trea,d. 
Seeking the spot, by most forgot, 

Where sleep the generations dead. 

And now we come into the home, 

The dear old home our boyhood knew, 

And round the board, with plenty stored, 
We gather as we used to do. 

With reverence now, I see him bow 

That head, with many honors crowned; 

All white his locks, as are the flocks 
That feed upon the hills around. 

12 



Again we meet in converse sweet 
Around the blazing-, cottag-e hearth, 

And while away the closing- day 
With quiet speech and tales of mirth. 

The spell is broke; ah, cruel stroke! 

The illusive vision will not stay. 
My fond sweet dream was fancy's gleam 

Which stubborn fact has chased away. 

I am alone, my friend is gone; 

No more he'll seek that pleasant scene; 
His feet no more shall wander o'er 

Those wooded hills and pastures green. 

No more he'll look upon the brook, 

Whose banks his infant feet had pressed, 

The little rill whose waters still 
Come dancing from the rosy west. 

Nor will he climb at autumn time 
Those hills the glorious sight to view, 

When in their best the woods are dressed 

The same his raptured boyhood knew. 

13 



The hermit thrush at twilight's hush 
No more he'll hear with deep delight; 

No blossom gay beside the way 
Attracts his quick and eager sight. 

The lulling sound from pines around 
No more shall soothe his noonday rest, 

Nor trailing cloud with misty shroud 
For him the mourning hills invest. 

That voice so sweet that late did greet 
My ear each passing summer-tide, 

Is silent now; that reverent brow 
Rests in the grave at Roslyn-side. 

His was a life of toil and strife 

Against the wrong and for the good; 

Through weary years of hopes and fears 
For Freedom, Truth and Right he stood. 

At length a gleam of broad esteem 
On his declining years was cast, 

And a bright crown of high renown 
Enwreathed his hoary head at last. 

14 



His love of song-, so deep and strong- 
In boyhood, faded not in ag-e; 

Till life's last hour with noontide power 
His g-enius lit the printed page. 

His sun has set, its twilight yet 
Flushes the chambers of the sky; 

A softer flame of spreading fame, 
A g'lory that shall never die. 




15 



XLbc Sentiment ot tbe 5)a^ 

W. E. SIMONDS 

^Mtr FKKi. that I am here this morning- as 
II learner rather than as teacher, and 
yet as a teacher of literature I am 
g-lad of the opportunity to speak brief words 
in appreciation of the man whose life and 
work and character we are uniting- to 
honor. One hundred years ag-o to-day there 
was born in a certain home among- the hills 
of western Massachusetts our first American 
poet. I wish that we might, particularly 
those of us who are young-er, catch, during" 
this hour, a g-limpse of that home, and breathe 
its atmosphere. It is indeed a rare privileg-e 
that is ours to-day, the privileg-e of looking" 
into the face and listening- to the voice of 
one who knew that home most intimately, 

17 



and of another who was himself a member 
of that household and knew our poet as only 
brother can know brother. 

It is almost impossible, I take it, for the 
students of our colleges and hig-h schools to 
realize the condition of literature in this coun- 
try at the beginning- of the present century. 
There was no American poet when Bryant was 
born; but soon, up among the Berkshire hills, 
the lad began to speak, for the poet in him 
spoke, and he gave to men in those serious, 
solemn tones of his, which have come down to 
the present day like great organ tones, 
thoughts and ideals that have admonished and 
inspired. Happily Bryant went to nature and 
listened to her various voices. In forest and 
mountain, in the light of the setting suns, the 
blue sky, the round ocean, — and in the mind of 

18 



man, he felt the Presence. Like his brother 
poet Wordsworth, Bryant, too, heard the still, 
sad music of humanity, and as to the Eng-lish 
seer, so to the American that music was not 
harsh or g-rating, although with ample power 
to chasten and subdue. 

But it is not alone the poet^ whom we honor 
to-day; it is still more the man. In the words 
which shall be spoken to you here, young ladies 
and g-entlemen, and in the words read to you 
but written elsewhere, often will the sentiment 
be noted that it is the life of Bryant which is 
his greatest g"lory. Poet he was indeed; but 
his truest poetry was the poetry that he lived. 
Life is more than utterance and character is 
greater than mere expression. I am not, how- 
ever, here to eulogize the hero of the day. On 
this platform are others better qualified to per- 

19 



form that gracious task. To me is g-iven 
rather to formulate the "sentiment" of the 
day. Let me address myself especially to 
the young- people in this g-reat audience; and 
for them particularly, let that sentiment be: 
' ' Grateful remembrance by the present of the 
past. Reverence, affection, gratitude, for our 
good and true first poet, William Cullen 
Bryant." 




20 




imiUtam CuUen JBr^ant 

1794-1894 

Gentle in spirit as in mien severe; 

Calm but not cold; streng-th, majesty and g*race, 
Measure and balance and repose, in clear 

Lines like a sculptor's, g-raven on his face. 

Such imag-e lovers of his verse have learned 
To limn their poet, peaceful after strife; 

A statue, as of life to marble turned? 

Nay, as of marble turned to breathing- life. 




University of Chicago 

33 



Cummtnaton 

EUGENE C. BATES 
^^^^ Y kin-ship for Cumming-ton has a 
m 11 ^ ' ' long- and toug-h root ;" little g-reen 
shoots are constantly spring-ing" up 
to remind me that it is still alive. I love Cum- 
ming-ton; it is my native town. I love her plain, 
unobtrusive people, true as steel and governed 
by high motives. There are the friends of my 
boyhood and early manhood. The hills and 
valleys, the woods and fields, the rocks, the 
by-ways, the cow lanes and stone walls seem 
to be a part of myself, and only some mig-hty 
upheaval can detach me from it. But few of 
you have visited this historic spot; yet not one 
within reach of my voice, but will reg-ard it 
with reverence as the early home of the Bry- 
ants. You may not find Cummington on the 

25 



map, yet she bears herself proudly reg"ardless 
of the omission. Situated partly on the crest 
and at the foot of a mountain, in Western 
Hampshire county, Massachusetts, midway 
between Northampton and Pittsfield — the 
former being- in the valley of the Connecticut 
river, the latter in the Housatonic valley — 
forty miles apart. It is twelve miles to the 
nearest railway station. Cummington is about 
the center of what are called the hill towns of 
western Massachusetts, lying- to the east of 
the "Berkshire Hills," made famous by the 
memory of Hawthorne and the Sedg*wicks. 
The Westfield river divides the town from 
west to east. The valley is narrow, wooded 
hills rising- from either side, leaving- barely 
room for the hig-hway along the banks of the 
rocky river bed. To the west the valley 

26 



broadens to make room for a small village 
(West Cumming-toti). Five miles to the east 
lies the villag-e of East Cumming-ton. Come 
with me for a drive on this valley road, shaded 
much of the way with the over-hang-ing- alder, 
the beech and the — - ""^ 

birch, down * ' Dug- 
Hill" to *'Lig-htning-- 
bug," over '^Roaring- 
Brook" past the 
" Bryant Library," a ?^^ 
gift from William 
Cullen Bryant to his 
native town, then on to East Cummington. 
On the south side of the valley, nearly one 
mile up the steep and rugged mountain-side, 
half way between the two villages is the Brya,iit 
farm and homestead, consisting of forest, 




meadow, and orchards of apples and pears. 
You reach the house through an avenue of 
maples, the fields lying- in peace just beyond. 
There are no "discordant noises of industry" 
here. The house, plain and commodious, re- 
tains its orig-inal shape as built by Dr. 
Peter Bryant, father of the "Bryant family." 
We find a well-kept lawn enclosed by a 
beautiful hemlock hedge. Standing on the 
broad and generous porch, to the north 
you look across the valley to the rising 
hills, dotted with the old farm buildings. 
In the distance are the quaint old church and 
town house in Plainfield, the birthplace and 
the early home of Charles Dudley Warner. To 
the east of Plainfield you see the hills of Ash- 
field, made famous as the summer home of 
George W. Curtis and Charles Elliott Norton. 

28 



Here is located the well known Ashfield Acad- 
emy, which has its annual dinner always 
g-raced by New Eng-land's leading- literary men 
and women. To the east is the rugg-ed hill- 
top of Goshen with its one summer hotel. 
Next south is the perfect New Bng-land villag-e 
of Chesterfield. Crowning- her mountain top, 
the summer home of the Rev. John White Chad- 
wick and his Brooklyn friends. Climbing- the 
mountain-side and west of the "Homestead," 
to the south you see the old town of Worth- 
ing-ton. From the summit of "Mount Bry- 
ant," twenty-one hundred feet above the sea, 
you discern to the west the "Berkshire Hills," 
and to the northwest rises the rounded point 
of old Gray Lock. What a panorama of moun- 
tains, hills and valleys! In spring- and sum- 
mer, a vast area of ever varying* g-reen; in 

29 



autumn, crowned with all the vivid coloring's 
of nature; in winter, an ocean of barren hills 
and rocks and leafless trees, clothed in sombre 
brown or covered with its mantle of snow, still 
g-rand in its rug-g-edness. What a birth-place 
and early home for nature's greatest inter- 
preter! 




30 



Ibpmn 
jfor tbe IbunOreDtb Bnnivcrsars ot JSr^ant's :©(rtb 

JOHN WHITE CHADWICK 

Thou mig-hty God, who didst of old 
The psalmist's wondrous song- inspire, 

Our hearts are glad that every ag-e 
Is touched by Thy immortal fire. 

We bless Thee for that radiant band 
Whose voices on our Western shore 

Have made a music clear and sweet 
Which men shall love forevermore. 

Still fresh the grief that fills our hearts 
For him who lingered on awhile, 

When all the rest had gone, to cheer 
Our spirits with his happy smile. 

Dear poet of the cheerful heart. 
How can our voices choked with tears 

I^ift up a song aright to him 
Whose cycle counts a hundred years? 

31 



He loved the vales, the woods, the streams, 
The mountains cheered his loftier mind; 

The winds their summits nurtured found 
His soul as free and unconfined. 

A deeper joy his song- instilled 

For every flower that gems the sod; 

He looked throug-h Nature's trembling- veil, 
And saw the face of Nature's God. 

Yet more the press of busy men 
Allured him than the forest's aisle. 

And more the strife with social ill 
Than ever the blue heaven's smile. 

Wherever Rig-ht her flag- unfurled. 
And Justice showed a better way, 

And Truth and Freedom spurned the night. 
And hailed the burnished spears of dsij, 

There was his place and there he made 
His voice a clarion, ringing clear, 

To rouse the sleepers, wake the dead. 
And stay the faint with hope and cheer. 

33 



O, Thou, who in the crowded streets 
As in the leafy coverts dim, 

His song inspired, be Thou with us 
As ever, in his day, with him, 

That Nature's good our hearts may fill 
With holy peace, while still we move 

With tireless feet on Duty's quest, 
And do the patient work of Ivove. 




33 



The melancholy days have come, 
The saddest of the year, 

Of wailing winds and naked woods 
And meadows brown and sere" 



XTbe Centennial BOM^ess 

EDWIN R. BROWN 

^m^^ HIS occasion is shadowed by the recent 
L I death of the g-entle and delig-htful 

^^^ g-enius who has long- been the Auto- 
crat of our breakfast tables. Holmes was the 
last, as Bryant was the pioneer, of the Great 
Six of American poetry. He was the last, 
too, of that hig-h-souled circle of 
wits, poets and idealists, — Haw- 
thorne, Thoreau, Marg-aret Fuller, 
Ag-assiz, Motley, and their compeers, 
— whose habitat was about Cam- 
bridg-e and Concord, and whose work 
graced and g-lorified the pag-es of the old At- 
lantic Monthly in its early days. 

Wherever in the wide Unseen the Autocrat 

37 




may be to-day, I have no doubt he sing-s still 
and will ever sing-, 

"Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul, 
As the swift seasons roll." 

Cumming-ton is one of the loveliest and most 
secluded little towns of Western Massachu- 
setts. It is accessible only by considerable 
j^^ climbitig- over lofty ridg-es, by winding-, nar- 
row and vine-bordered hig-h- 
ways, and has no 
railroad, nor tele- 
g-raph nor telephone 
nor newspaper. It is 
a lost Arcadia in miniature. There, on a 
stormy November evening-, exactly a century 
ago, while a raw east wind whistled drearily 
around the mountain home of Dr. Peter Bryant, 
America's first g-reat poet was born. Only four 
days later the weather had chang-ed, and little 

38 




Cullen took his first outing with his mother, 
and looked vaguely out, we may suppose, on 
the glorious landscape he afterward came to 
love so well. The region is high, yet sheltered 
by loftier heights. In the foreground the rapid 
Westfield river, mostly hidden from view in its 
deep, narrow valle}^, sends up, when all is calm, 
a mellow and soothing roar from its rocky bed. 
Beyond, the rock-ribbed heights, ridge beyond 
ridge, stretch away to Monadnock on the east, 
and on the west, to blue old Greylock, 

"Familiar with forg-otten years." 

It was one of those mystical and delicious 
Indian summer days, of which the New Eng- 
land climate always reserves a little sheaf for 
November, 

"As still such days will come 
To call the squirrel aud the bee from out their winter home;" 

one of those days, when, as the legend runs, 

39 



' ' l^he Indian sun-god, preparing- for his win- 
ter's sleep, fills his great pipe and divinely 
smokes away the hours," filling all the autumn 
landscape with the soft blue haze of his dreams. 
It was a fitting time and place for the intro- 
duction of Nature's own poet to our waiting 
planet. 

Every step in the poet's long life, every 
aspect of his character and work, is to me a 
kind of hallowed pleasure-ground, — but, lest I 
consume an undue share of your time, I will 
confine myself to a few phases of the subject, 
making my talk simple and reminiscent rather 
than critical. Looking backward from the 
height of a century, that gentle magician, 
Distance, lends such ten-der enchantment to the 
story of early days among the dear old hills, 
that I will rather recall the work and play and 

40 



rare environment of the poet's youth than the 
later days of assured honor and world-wide 
renown. 

First, Ladies and Gentlemen, let us locate 
Bryant in history. A fresh impulse from some 
unrecognized source was given to men's minds 
in the early years of the present century. 
There was a revival of poetry in many lands, a 
liberation from old forms, bringing in a sim- 
pler style, and a closer clinging to the breast 
of nature. New England gave us, so to speak, 
six giants of poetry at a birth — Bryant, 
Emerson, Whittier, Longfellow, Lowell and 
Holmes. Across the sea arose a similar 
group almost simultaneously — Wordsworth, 
Scott, Bj^ron, .- ^ Coleridge, 

Keats and "^r-^^^^^ Tennyson. 





Poets are not necessarily abnor- 
mal, unbalanced and improvident 
being's. All the American group 
came of sound and well-reg-ulated 
families, and all had charming- households of 
their own, well provided for. All were pro- 
foundly relig-ious, and though not 
one of them could be counted evan- 
g-elical, they all modestly sang- and 
lived that elder and eternal religion ^^| 
that is always true, while theologies 
and mythologies pass away. I heard 
that bundle of energy and efficiency, your own 
President Finley, remark in an eloquent Fourth 
,*^5sv of July address, that there are lan- 

guages in which there is no such' 
word as home; but with our poetic 
Six that word home is the central 

42 






sun around which lang-uag-e re- 
volves. John Brig-ht said he liked 
" to read American poets better than 
the British, not that they were better poets, 
but because they were better citizens. 

Wordsworth first caught on his side of the 
sea, the new spirit I have spoken of, as did 
Bryant on the American. These two have 
much in common. There is the same simplic- 
ity and exquisite fitness of language, the same 
tenderness, and the same sense of eternal equi- 
librium in the universe, — 

" No great and no small 
To the Soul that maketh all " 

Bryant is the more modest. In Wordsworth 
it is always Wordsworth who speaks; 
in Bryant the voice often seems to 
come from "earth and her waters, 

m 




and the depths of air." To them both the 
twinkle of a dewdrop in the grass is as essen- 
tial to the integrity of the universe as the 
mighty whirl of Saturn and his rings of glory. 
Of the group of large-brained and stout- 
hearted brothers and sisters, of whom William 
Cullen Bryant was the bright particular 
star, but one remains ' ' on this bank 
and shoal of time," John Howard 
Bryant, who, thank heaven, is with 
us this morning in a fair state of 
health. Full of days and of good 
works, he carries off his eighty-seven 
years with brain unscathed, and a brave and 
cheerful spirit. "Winter is on his head, but 
eternal spring is in his heart." He seems to 
me, now that the Great Six have passed away, 
to be a kind of afterglow left on our sky. 




I have no sympathy with that Talmagiati, 
emotion-hunting- spirit that runs back with lit- 
eral keg- and bottle to bring- home water from 
the Jordan or the Rubicon. But I confess to 
an intense interest in the mountain homestead 
where our poet and his brother wroug-ht 
with axe and flail, while his mother and 
sisters made ^olian music on the spin- 
ning- wheel. It is no wonder that in 
August last a great company — great in 
quality as well as in number — gathered on the 
old farm and honored themselves in honoring 
the poet's memory, as 3"ou, ladies and gentle- 
men, are doing here this morning. That com- 
pany were seated in the shade of venerable 
beeches on whose dappled bark the poet carved 
his name ninety years ago. A few rods away 
flows the now classic " Rivulet," still "singing 

45 



down its narrow g-len;" and across a narrow 
meadow on the south stands the dark wood for 
whose entrance the " Inscription " was written, 
its tall trees still waving- and whispering- in 
response to the mountain wind, that "most 
spiritual thing- of all the wide earth knows." 
Across the deep g'org-e of the Westfield can be 
seen winding- up the opposite heights the nar- 
row highway up which young Bryant walked 
in the twilight of a December day in 1815, 
feeling forlorn and desolate over his prospects 
in life, for he was now twenty-one years of 
age, and was going out to make his own way 
in the big practical world for himself. Against 
the crimson afterglow of sunset he noted the 
flight of a single duck on his southward migra- 
tion. Here was a wanderer as lonely as him- 
self, speeding confidently away into distance 

46 



and approaching- nig-ht. It was this incident 
that sug-g-ested and called forth those lines, by 
many counted his best, "To a waterfowl." 
You all know the closing- stanza; at least, that 
little quatrain which has been to multitudes 
in hours of doubt and apprehension, "the 
shadow of a g-reat rock in a weary land," with 
its sublime trust, and will be while the lan- 
guag-e endures, — 

"He who, from zone to zone, 
Guides throug-h the boundless sky thy certain flight, 
In the long- way that I must tread alone, 

Will lead my steps aright." 

Victor Hug-o was right when he said, 
* 'Every bird that flies carries the thread of the 
infinite in his claw." That lone bird disap- 
peared in the distance, and the poet has passed 
to the Unseen, but by a noble touch of genius 
that thread became a cable of hope and trust, 

47 



strong- and imperishable. And O, how often, 
to the reformer, harried and buffeted in the 
long- struggle with ignorance and sham and 
wrong, come, like cooling water from the 
well of Haran, those precious lines, 

"Truth crushed to earth will rise again, 
The eternal years o/" <?oc/ are her's ! " 

Do not wonder that I have made much of 
locality, for there is not a rustic home, a gur- 
gling brook, or a murmuring pine on all my 
native hills that has not its added dower of 
beauty from Bryant's immortal words. He 
made those mountain streams sacred in litera- 
ture like the Avon and the Doon. And let me 
remind you, that no other has sung so grandly 
and truly of the Prairies as he. In company 
with his youngest brother he rode over these 

48 



broad and silent savannas on horseback, when 
the wild, unshorn and verdant wastes shone 

"With flowers whose glory and whose multitude 
Rivalled the constellations." 

The "Painted Cup," in scarlet tufts, glowed 
in the wide stretch of g-reen like flakes of fire; 
and the little Indian demon, the Manitou of 
flowers, drank from those brig-ht chalices the 
g-athered dew. Those flowers, as Fitz-Greene 
Halleck would have said, were beings of 
beauty and decay, and they are g-one; ripened 
corn leaves rustle to-day where the Painted 
Cup g"lowed on the boundless lawn sixty j^ears 
ago; the locomotive has supplanted the bison, 
but on Bryant's own "Prairies" the bison still 
roams a monarch, and the "Painted Cup" 
blooms on, and will bloom on forever. 

Bryant was as nearly without vices as men get 

49 



to be. He was a marvel, but no miracle. He 
v/as the result of high and favoring- conditions. 
Among these is the fact that he came of a 
line sound in physique, strong of brain and 
eminent for virtue; and that the perspective of 
his lineage runs back to John Alden and Pris- 
cilla Mullins under the bows of the 
Mayflower. Strength and integrity 
characterized the line. 

In Bryant's parentage there was a 
happy combination of Cavalier and 
Puritan in temperament. Dr. Peter 
Bryant, genial, scholarly, generous and poetic; 
Mrs. Bryant, plodding, persistent, energetic and 
scrupulous as the lines of light, — what happier 
race mixture could be desired? The poet's 
grandfather Snell was Abrahamic, Puritanic 
and severe in faith. The old gentleman had 

50 




in him a vein of humor, but a joke from Squire 
Snell was a comic cherub carved on an old-time 
tombstone. Usually he was so grave that, as 
Lamb would say, "Newton might have de- 
duced the law of gravitation from him." To 
little Cullen his Puritan grandfather was a cave 
of gloom; his mother was his reliance, and his 
father was sunshine and inspiration. 

There was then no ceaseless flood of cheap 
books and periodicals, good, bad and indiffer- 
ent, as to-day, but Dr. Bryant wisely provided 
appetizing and nourishing pasturage of books 
in which his children could browse at will, 
such as "Little Jack," "Robinson Crusoe," 
and Mrs. Barbauld's stories. Often, the Doc- 
tor, returning weary from his severe profes- 
sioneil rides over the hills, would stretch him- 
self out on the "settle," and would call Cullen 

51 



to read or recite from Watts' Hymns ; for their 
perfect musical rythm and noble imag-ery were 
a restful delig-ht to him. This the boy would 
do, usually mounting- a chair to g-ive his deliv- 
ery vantag"e ground. Whether so intended by 
the Doctor or not, this was an admir- 
able training" for the ear and the im- 
ag-ination of the future poet. Then 
followed the best periodicals, few, 
but nutritious, in which g-ood Dr. 
Channing- shone a star of the first 
mag-nitude ; and always at hand were Plutarch 
and the poets. Pope, Gray and Goldsmith. 
From these sprang- the poet's early and life- 
long- interest in the Greeks and their strug-g-les 
for liberty, in which he became as enthusiastic 
as Byron himself. On rainy days the little 
boys, Austin and William Cullen, would be- 

52 




take themselves to the barn, and with old hats 
for helmets, and plumes of tow, would fight 
over ag-ain the battles of the Greeks and 
Trojans. 

Dr. Bryant was an accomplished physician, a 
Federalist and a leader in politics, with a high 
literary reputation and great hospitality. 
These considerations drew authors, judges and 
clergymen from far and near, to tarry for a 
night, and refresh themselves by contact with 
a man of culture and information. The com- 
ing poet and politician, as a listening and recep- 
tive boy, must have absorbed from such com- 
pany much that no professional boys' school 
could have given him. Then he had the vir- 
gin forest solitudes for a playground, and there 
his mind, without effort of his own, became 
stored with those pleasing natural images and 

S3 



analogies which he used with such magic 
effect in all the after 3^ears. 

Kxcept for the companionship of a scholarly 
father at odd hours, and the many visitors at 
the homestead, Bryant's boyhood passed much 
like that of other lads in the same region, 
though he must often have felt stirring within 
him higher thoughts and sweeter dreams than 
he could share with his rustic companions. 
The meagre winter school, the Meeting-House, 
solemn and cold, standing cheek by jowl with 
the tavern, jolly and warm; the great stage 
coach, and the driver's mellow horn; the "Post 
Rider," bringing the county paper; "Militia 
Trainings" on "Meeting-House Green," rais- 
ings, huskings, apple bees and singing 
schools, — these as well as hard work, were 
features of the time; and best of all, that gen- 

54 



uine civic "university extension," the New 
Eng-land town-meeting-, that most precious 
institution broug-ht from the Netherlands by 
the Pilg-rim Fathers. It was a model school 
of public business and debate which boys were 
allowed to attend. The "March Meeting-" 
was the Massachusetts House of Commons, 
and the orthodox pulpit was its House of 
Lords. 

I often wonder whether we should ever have 
had from Bryant a Thanatopsis or a Forest 
Hymn if our present mediocrity -making- school 
system, with its constant competitive examina- 
tions, and its marking's and child prizes, had 
been in vogue a hundred years ag-o. I do not 
believe we should. Far better was it for the 
boy Bryant to listen to Socratic discussions by 
his father's broad fireside, or to the "nooning-" 

55 



debates of the sturdy farmers, as they ate their 
rye and Indian bread and cheese on the steps 
of the Old Yellow Meeting--House. These 
discussions were larg-ely political, the majority 
of the people of the reg-ion, led by Dr. Bryant, 
being- zealous Federalists. Jefferson was 
New England's bug-aboo. It was the very 
time of which Wendell Phillips used to tell, 
when Massachusetts mothers frig-htened their 
children to sleep by saying-, "Thomas Jeffer- 
son!" But the boy poet had learned to reason, 
and so, thoug-h as a boy he g-ave his satire 
free rein on Jefferson in his "Bmbarg-o," in 
due time he became an honored leader of the 
Jeffersonian forces of the land. 

No Greek or Roman matron of heroic days 
left a more spotless record of a busy life than 
the poet's mother. To her example he attrib- 

56 




utes his rig-id adherence to the g-reat ^\ - ^^ ^ ^ 

^\\ ' 
rule of rig-ht without regard to per- ' ^ W _ 

sons. She was in person tall, ag*ile "■'■ 

and strong*, her clear, fresh complexion g"iving- 
her a youthful appearance, even in old ag-e. 
She was an expert horse-woman, and at the 
ag^e of sixty-seven could vault from the g-round 
into the saddle. 

The poet's mother kept a most remarkable 
diary. Not such as most of us keep, which 
after the first week or two of the New Year is 
left to perish of neg-lect, but she kept one for 
fifty-three solid years, without the break of a 
day. Kvery day has, in her own hand, a con- 
densed record of weather, household work and 
neig-hborhood events. Nothing- was allowed 
to interfere. Company, sickness, journeys, 
birth, death itself, made no break in the record. 

57 



Each year has its quaint little volume, the 
paper being cut and bound by her own hands, 
and sewed with linen thread of her own spin- 
ning-. The poet's reticence, his steadfastness, 
and his life-long" care never to say the wrong- 
word, are foreshawdowed in this diary. This 
kind, persistent, practical woman, in all the 
nearly 20,000 entries of the diary, makes no 
complaint, speaks no unpleasant word of a 
neighbor, and utters never a syllable of cant 
or gush! Old Isaac Disraeli, in his three vol- 
umes of the "Curiosities of Literature," has 
nothing to match this. 

Among the quaint and suggestive memo- 
randa of baking, brewing, spinning, church- 
going, and sausage-cutting, would come such 
items as this, "Warped a piece for Mrs. 
Briggs," "Made a bonnet for myself," "Made 

58 



NOVEMBER 9, t794. 



Paid. 



MiMORAfJDuMs and Remarks 










r.f^:^^-^ 



i 
















a cover for John" (a cover was an all-around 
apron), "Turned a pair of trousers for Cullen." 

And here is an entry of especial interest for 
this occasion. It was made a hundred years 
ago to-day. It is not underscored; there is no 
index fing-er pointing it out as important, yet 
it marks an era in American literature: 



"M. 3. Stormy; wind n. e.; churned; unwell; seven at niyht 
a son born." 



From the record for 1811, we find that Cul- 
len was at Williams College, but came home 
in May. A calf was killed, but whether in 
honor of the student's return is not stated. In 
December, 1811, he goes to Worthington to 
study law; and he goes wearing the overcoat 
his own mother cut and made for him. It also 
appears that she made the bottlegreen broad- 

60 



cloth suit which her husband, the Doctor, 
wore in the Massachusetts senate. 

Still on and on the diary g-oes for more than 
half a century, till at Princeton, in the winter 
of 1847, it records her fall, and the breaking- 
of a hip, but there is no break in the record, 
which still tells the weather, the kindness of 
friends, the coming* and g"oing- of fug-itive 
slaves on the Underg-round Railroad, the last 
tremulous entry being- made by her own stiffen- 
ing- ■ fingers, on the last day of her life, 
May 1, 1847. 

In the lines beg-inning-, "The May sun sheds 
an amber lig-ht," Bryant speaks tenderly of 
his mother. 

**Thanatopsis" must be counted the most 
remarkable of short poems. The extreme 
youth of the author, and the fact that the 



existence of the poem was a secret shared with 
no other human being-, for five years at least, 
give it a mystery and marvel that add to its 
grandeur. It is the vastest fig-ure of death 
ever drawn. The subject, thoug-h ancient as 
Arcturus and Orion, and hackneyed forever, 
seems new and untried. The author tells us 
only what we knew full well before, but tells 
it with such fitness and power that he seems 
to be the original discoverer, and to have res- 
cued the fact from chaos. Like the shot of 
the embattled farmers at Concord, it was the 
first of its kind, — a voice heard round the 
world. We can well imagine Milton saying 
to Bryant, as he said to another, ** After so 
glorious a performance, you ought to do noth- 
ing that is mean and little, not so much as to 
think of anything but what is great and sub- 

62 



lime!" If any such injunction was heard by 
our author, g-randly did he heed it. 

When as a boy of eig-ht to ten years of age, 
I sat on the "Little Seats" in the old red 
school-house on the Cumming-ton hills, the big- 
ger boys and girls sometimes had ' ' Thanatop- 
sis" for a reading lesson. I was always a 
deeply interested listener when the big boys 
and girls struggled through the noble selec- 
tions in the old readers. Kven then there 
arose in my mind a vague wonder why it was, 
that to hear the minister talk of death made 
my flesh creep and my heart sink, v/hile to 
hear "Thanatopsis," though the theme was 
the very same, was soothing and exalting. 
Doubtless this was in part due to the large 
way in which the subject is viewed in the 
poem, the magnificent vastness and univers- 
es 



ality of the fact of death taking- away the feel- 
ing- of loneliness and g-loom. It was even a 
little flattering-, — "Thou shalt lie down with 
patriarchs of the infant world, with king-s," 
and so on. Perhaps it was also the deep sea 
roll of its rhythm, and the exquisite simplicity 
and fitness of language, which even a child 
could feel, and whose beauty not even the 
shambling awkwardness of the rustic readers 
could altogether mar or hide. Its solemn 
imagery came into my boyish mind with 
the pensive sweetness of far-off midnight 
music. There is nothing in it pitiful and dis- 
tressing, as in Addison's "Vision of Mirza," 
with its terrible bridge in the valley of Bagdad, 
but all is grand, orderly and serene. 

A mile from the Bryant home on a high 
ridge of rock, called " Meeting-House Hill," 

64 



stood the "Old Yellow Meeting-House," 
a hug-e, wind-shaken structure, in whose vast 
attic were kept the town's reserve of muskets 
and ammunition. Sitting- in the g-allery of 
that old meeting--house might be seen on Sun- 
days in the summer of 1811, a handsome, 
smooth-faced youth of seventeen, who seemed 
to be listening decorously to the long homilies 
poured forth by good Parson Briggs from the 
high pulpit, in which the preacher seemed to 
be going to sea in a mug. Really, the 
thoughts of the handsome youth in the wide 
gallery were wandering in "God's first tem- 
ples," and he was listening to "Airs from 
viewless Eden blown," for "Thanatopsis" was 
then taking form in his mind. How little the 
grave and stately minister dreamed that, when 
eighty years should have rolled away, the solil- 

65 



oquj of the handsome youth would be known 
and admired in all civilized lands and lan- 
guag-es, while his own faithful and sonorous 
messages of more than fifty consecutive years, 
would have passed, with the tall pulpit and 
sounding-board from which they were pro- 
mulgated, to a deep and common forgetful- 
ness! "Thanatopsis" is the soliloquy of youth, 
yet forgotten nations, ancient constellations, 
and the living present seem to be reverently 
listening, and adding their solemn Amen. 

"The g-olden sun, 
The planets, all the infinite host of heaven. 
Are shining- on the sad abodes of death, 
Throug-h the still lapse of ag-es. All that tread 
The globe are but a handful to the tribes 
That slumber in its bosom.— Take the wings 
Of morning, pierce the Barcan wilderness. 
Or lose thyself in the continuous woods 
Where rolls the Oregon, and hears no sound, 
Save his own dashings— yet the dead are there: 
And millions in those solitudes, since first 
The flight of years began, have laid them down 
In their last sleep— the dead reign there aloue." 

66 



This was not written for fame nor to propo- 
xate a theory. We all instantly ag-ree that 
what is said is true, but if there were a theory, 
the more exact the statement, the more certain 
we should be of disagreement. It was no more 
affected by authority, conventionalism, the 
exig-encies of reputation, or financial consider- 
ations than the ^'flig-ht of years" itself. 

Henry Ward Beecher, in a discourse deliv- 
ered soon after the poet's death, pronounced 
" Thanatopsis" a pag-an poem. Well, it is the 
poem of the human race, and that includes the 
pag-an. It is pag-an, as the air, the sea, and 
the Zodiac are pag-an. Death is simply and 
surely restored to its proper place in the beau- 
tiful, universal order. It is the one g-reat 
poem to which a date would be an imperti- 
nence. It fits as perfectly for ten thousand 

67 



years ag-o, or ten thousand years hence, as for 
today. No modern genius has given sweeter 
expression to youth and beauty, than did some 
of the pagan poets, dead twenty centuries ago; 
but of all the long line, from Homer down, it 
was reserved for the boy Bryant, more than 
any other, to complete Nature's circuit, and 
make even old age and death grand and sweet. 
Let us recall for a moment Bryant's rare 
personality. There was an indefinable some- 
thing in his whole aspect that at once conveyed 
the impression of a nature reverend, robust and 
grand. He was erect in figure, always stand- 
ing squarely on both feet, — a mental as well 
as a physical characteristic. His head and 
face, like his first great poem, seemed to 
belong to all ages of the world. What a capi- 
tal model it would have furnished for a gigan- 



tic sculpture on the pediment of the Parthenon! 
Some faces carry their date and all their story 
in the lines of expression. The whole book 
is printed on the cover. Bryant's deeply 
carved countenance was hieroglyphic, and 
belong-ed to ante-diluvian, post-diluvian, or 
current time, according- to your imagination. 
Keen eyes, peering out from the shadow of 
overhanging brows, did not hold yovi, like the 
"glittering eye" of the Ancient Mariner, but 
they penetrated to your very marrow. 

Like his father he liked to be neatly dressed, 
for he had none of the small "pride that apes 
humility." Antisthenes, the Cynic, affected a 
ragged coat; but Socrates said to him, "Antis- 
thenes, I can see your vanity peering out 
through the holes of your coat." Bryant care- 
fully observed the rules of good society, but 

69 



felt no sense of incongruity in the company of 
shirt-sleeved laborers, nor would he, like 
Scott's Sir Piercie Shafton, blush to lead the 
farmer's daughter out to dinner or the dance. 
He was reticent. Even with old acquaint- 
ances he did not conceal his distaste for those 
pretty conA'^entional fibs and pretences that 
come of "making" talk. He loved to hear and 
tell a g-ood funny story, but took little part in 
the lig"htning"-bug' sparkle of social time-kill- 
ing". He loved to have with him on a long" stroll, 
an orig^inal-minded and sug-g^estive friend, 
who could enjoy the companionship of silence, 
and take a g-reat deal for g-ranted. Webster 
had a talent for sleep. Bryant had a talent for 
solitude and silence. He must often have felt 
like saying, as little Paul Dombey at the sea- 
side said to the sympathetic, chattering chil- 

70 



dren around him, "Go away, if you please; 
thank you, thank you, but I don't want you." 
Bryant's power of acquiring knowledge was 
so prodigious, and his industry so unremitting, 
that in effect he lived two or three centuries. 
His wonderful memory was not a Robert 
Houdin drag-net, raking in every thing, good, 
bad and indifferent. Only that which had 
merit of some kind was retained. To him 
titles were tittles, and he would not wear one. 
The popular notion that he was of cold and 
impassive temperament is perhaps excusable, 
because of his coolness with strangers, though 
the truth is, that he was intense in friendship 
and had a torrid temper. His whole life, 
?^er, having been a struggle to overcome 
imperfections of every kind, he came at last to 
hold an air-brake control of himself, and 

71 



became one of the g-entlest of men. Yet one 
who should at any time presume to impug-n 
his personal integrity, or to kill the wild birds 
on his premises, would become aware of heat 
under that cool exterior. Not Sterne's "My 
Uncle Toby" himself could have been 
more tender with the suffering-, or more 
g-entle with the animal creation than he. Bry- 
ant secured nothing- of what is called "passional 
training-'' — Lord save the mark! — by the sac- 
rifice of women's hearts, as did Goethe, Byron 
and Burns. The windows of his soul were open 
to veracity, courag-e and virtue, and these 
ang-els broug-ht him the g-ift of tongues and of 
song. Like the planets in their courses, 
Bryant was never idle, never behind time, and 
never in a hurry. He was the most American 
of our poets. He belongs to the soil and skies 
n 



of his native land, as distinctly as the bison and 
the bald eag-le. He was an optimist, with the 
serene assurance of great and earnest souls 
that the universe is sound and God is well. 
His faith was like the eternal sunset in Faust, 
where every height is on fire and every vale 
is in repose. Browning" passionately vocifer- 
ates that "God is well." He cries, ''Iterate, 
reiterate, snatch it from the hells." Bryant 
in serener mood leads us on to where the same 
glorious assurance opens upon us, 

"From the empyreal height 
With warmth, and certainty, and boundless light." 

Bryant has no line of despair — not one! His 
God may not be, as Socrates said his was, "a 
God of glee," but he is a God of serene and 
eternal joy. 

Bryant's poetry, like the play-acting of 

73 



Booth and Jefferson, is neither startling- nor 
sensational, and may at first seem to lack fire, 
but, like everything- truly beautiful, it is a 
constant revelation. Gradually absolute fidel- 
ity to nature attunes our taste to a faultless 
execution. 

Parke Godwin has happily said, that poetry 
is "the steeping- of the palpable and familiar 
in the g-lorious dyes of the ideal." Matthew 
Arnold says, it is "a faculty of divination," 
and Coleridge, that it is "the best words 
in the best order." Bryant fully answers all 
these definitions. His exquisite choice of 
words, in sound as well as sig-nification, is a 
continual delight. A hundred instances will 
come to the minds of some of you; I can only 
pause to note one or two: 

74 



"The sound of dropping- nuts is heard 
Thoug-h all the trees are still." — 

Not falling nuts, but dropping; leaves fall, 
nuts drop. When he speaks of the **still 
lapse of ag'es," the words hold you, and com- 
pel you to linger. And mark how smoothly 
and silently 

"The long train of ages glides away" 

in an infinite perspective! The finest touches 
we feel, but can hardly analyze, for much of 
their power and sweetness lies in the ear of 
him that hears. 

Bryant is accurate, but does not weary with 
detail, like the old poets, nor with catalog-u- 
ing-, like Walt Whitman. He sees the veins 
and cilia and serratures of the leaf, but he 
does not anatomize or dissect it. His style is 
so simple and clear as to seem inevitable. 

75 



"Heaped in the hollows of the grove, the autumn leaves lie dead; 
They rustle to the eddying gust, and to the rabbit's tread." 

How easy, and how obvious! How else could 
it have been written? It is the artlessness of 
perfect art. You will not find a crutch or a 
club-foot in all Bryant's procession. He is a 
great contrast with Emerson, who, always rich 
in thought, and often perfect in rhythm, some- 
times carelessly leaves a bar down, or a linch- 
pin out, as when he is talking of the Adiron- 
dack woods, 

"Where feeds the moose, and walks the surly bear, 
And up the tall mast runs the woodpecker I" 

Holmes explains that we may make this 
couplet rhyme by a bit of verbicide, thus: 

"Where feeds the moose, and walks the surly bear, 
And up the tall mast runs the wood peck-are!" 

Bryant's personifications of wind and stream 
and mountain we accept instantly and com- 

76 




pletely. "The Rivulet" and the 
"Evening Wind " become personal- 
ities as distinct to you and me as 
Clark E. Carr or Doctor Bateman. 

Hear him in the "Nig-ht Journey of a River," 

talking- to the rolling- stream: 

'O River! darkling- River! what a voice 
Is that thou utterest while all else is still — 
The ancient voice that, centuries ago, 
Sounded between thy hills, while Rome was yet 
A weedy solitude by Tiber's stream!" 

Bryant beg-an the practice of law in the little 
hamlet of Plainfield, Massachusetts, but soon 
exchang-ed its loneliness for the wider opportu- 
nities and excellent society of Great Barring-- 
ton. Here he was fairly successful in his pro- 
fession, and laid the foundation of a home, by 
a most happy and accordant marriage. 
Through his own aspirations, and the sugges- 
tions of the learned and appreciative Sedg- 

77 



LAST EDITIOM 



W}t Sbenirtg IP0II 





tEE ua mmmi 


rtfifl 


wm:! OF THE an. si.^'r.rrfxt.r:;'?: £5i5r«-^ 




^^ — ^ — g^JJ^ Q 



wicks 
>thers, 
p'r'u^^"'^ he entered in 1825 a wider and more 
congenial field of labor in the metropolis. His 
fame was already secure. Bryant lived in his 
own day two long- lives, and was pre-eminent 
in each, as poet and editor. Dr. Holmes, says 
truly, ''A breath of noble verse outlives all that 
can be carved in stone or cast in bronze. " Bry- 
ant's fame, therefore, rests mainly on his verses, 
but his chief merit is that he was a great and 
constant moral force. In the earlier part of 
his editorial career the moral apathy of the 
country was profound and almost hopeless. 
Yet he made the Evemng Post^ for a whole 

78 



generation, not only a recognized literary au- 
thority, but the high-water mark of public 
and political morality. He was as true and as 
imperturable as Alpha, the star of the north. 
For two generations he labored as a man among 
men, for the strengthening of that moral senti- 
ment, and that public and private virtue, which 
lie at the basis of all politics and all religion 
that are worth anything to mankind. 

In the very citadel of negrophobia and Baal- 
worship he raised the standard of that * 'High- 
er Law," whose home, as old Richard Hooker 
said, "Is in the bosom of God, and whose voice 
is the harmony of the universe." And when, 
in 1865, it became almost safe for Colleges to 
listen to Conscience, for Statesmen to be wise, 
for Commerce to be honest, for the Church to 
be Christian, and for Courts to be just, none 

79 



rejoiced with a profounder joy than this mod- 
est, faithful poet-editor, for none had played a 
nobler part than he in the mighty struggle. 

"Blest and thrice blest the Roman 
Who sees Rome's brightest day," 

and this our Cato saw. 

Few lives have been so well rounded and 
complete. No window in this Aladdin palace 
was left unfinished, but a magic lamp of gen- 
ius long shone clear from every one. His first 
word was the absolute truth of nature, and his 
last was an aspiration for that day-dawn, 
**when the rights and duties of human broth- 
erhood shall be acknowledged by all the races 
of mankind." 

Bryant was great in genius, great in exper- 
ience, great in purity of life, great in mod- 

80 



esty and simplicity. Let Clio, muse of his- 
tory, in the book of Fame write him immortal, 
and bid men earn and claim a palm like his. 

Trusting- the present, tolerant of the past, 
Firm-faithed in what shall come 
"When the vain noises of these days are dumb — 

His first word was noble as his last. 




81 




FROM THE EDITOR 
OF THE CENTURY 

Every lover of letters will be glad that you are to 
keep in memory the one hundredth birthday of Bry- 
ant. The principal question concerning- every poet 
is whether he is indeed a poet. That is the one mat- 
ter of importance — the rank time only can determine. 
That Bryant was a true poet there is no doubt. At 
his best he was an artist of no mean power; he had 
an exquisite truth of expression, and now and again 
the quick light of imagination. 

He was also something beside a poet. He was, 

here in New York, our "first citizen," a noble figure 

and influence in our civic life; a good man, a patriot, 

a statesman. His influence did not cease at the city's 

85 



bounds, nor with his lifetime. The nation was bet- 
ter for his thought, his pure and lofty art; it always 
will feel the effect upon it of the life of the poet, edi- 
tor, and patriot whose hundredth birthday you honor 
yourselves in thus remembering-. 




New York, November 1, 1894. 




FROM THE EDITOR 
OF THE ATI^ANTIC 

I am sorry that my engag-ements since receiving- 
your kind invitation have prevented me from writing 
before, so that I am forced now to content myself 
with little more than an acknowledg-ment of your 
courtesy. 

There is, I think, a sing-ular fitness in the cele- 
bration of Bryant's anniversary in the West, aside 
from the personal reasons which appear; for Bryant's 
poetry has in it the elemental quality; a g-reat sky 
broods over it; the lines, like his waterfowl, seem to 
rise and pass into large ether; and the sweep of the 
prairie, the spaciousness of great lakes and wide 

87 



horizon belong to the spirit which sounds through 
his grave, yet impassioned verse. The nation, now 
that it has gathered its great singers in the upper 
air, could ill afford to miss from that august choir the 
voice of Bryant. 



t>^ 






Boston, November 1, 1894. 




from the author of 
*'a wtti^k book of western verse" 

I am sorry that I cannot be with you at the Bry- 
ant celebration. I should like to testify by my pres- 
ence to my reverence and love for the noble old poet. 
Diis alitur videtur. There are exacting: home duties; 
things must be written; a delicate little baby daugh- 
ter must be watched; the wolf must be kept from the 
door. 

Many years have elapsed since my home was 
among your people. They have been eventful years 
with me, yet at no time in all that period have I 
ceased to think affectionately and tenderly of the old 
associates and the old scenes. And it has given me 
great regret indeed that I have not yet been able to 



demonstrate in some practical and effective way how 
large an obligation I feel that I am under to Knox, 
by no means the least beloved of my numerous Almce 
Matres. 

It would be particularly pleasant to renew old 
friendships under the auspices of that reunion which 
you are about to celebrate. Bryant was so loyal a 
lover, so enthusiastic a student, and so accurate a 
reader and interpreter of Nature, that I find it easy 
to associate him with beautiful Galesburg, its 
embowered homes, its venerable, hospitable trees, its 
shady walks and driveways, its billowy lawns, its ex- 
uberant gardens and its charming vistas. He would 
have loved that academic spot; he would have loved 
the people, too, for he would have found them gra- 
cious, appreciative and sympathetic in all those high 
and ennobling lines he always pursued. 

Dear sir, with every assurance of cordial regard, 

I am, 

Yours very sincerely, 

Eugene Fiei.d 

Bueua Park, November 1, 1894 



90 




FROM THE AUTHOR OF 
"THE GRANDISSIMES " 

Let tne thank you sincerely for the privilege of 
contributing- a written word to your celebration of 
the great life begun one hundred years ago almost in 
sight of the window where I sit at work. 

It seems to me especially fitting that the Centen- 
nial of the birth of Bryant should be commemorated 
in that "West" which was in his day as truly a land 
of Divine promise and command as was Canaan to 
the people of Moses. 

Our East was no Egypt to him; by no dark spir- 
itual experience did he ever know a land of captivity; 
but your vast prairies, with their splendid invitation 



to all lovers of freedom and progress to work out 
under their friendly sky the countless, painful prob- 
lems of the earth, were to him a mirror of his own 
majestic spirit as a prophet of political rig-hteousness 
and liberty, a priest of nature, and the most Ameri- 
can of poets. 



Ever yours truly, 



Dryad's Green, Northampton, Mass., October 29, 1894 




92 




FROM THE EDITOR 
OF THE DIAI, 

I feel myself honored by your invitation to par- 
ticipate in the proposed celebration of Bryant's birth- 
day at Knox. Unfortunately for me, circumstances 
imperatively forbid my being- present on that inter- 
esting- occasion. But I thank you sincerely for the 
kindness of your invitation, and beg- you to express 
my thanks to President Finley. 

I am g-lad to learn of this altogether fitting- cele- 
bration. It is a g-ood sign for literature and for 
higher education, when our colleges take up in this 
practical way the duty — which is even more a privi- 
lege than a duty — of honoring- the work and worth of 
our greatest American authors and greatest American 
citizens. Now that the last of the noble group has 
left us — the group that gave to American life in our 

93 



century its chief glory — their g-enius and their virtues 
cannot be too strong-ly impressed upon the young-, 
who are the heirs of to-day and the moulders of the 
future. There is surely a leg-itimate and honorable 
pride in one's own literature and one's own country, 
in thus paying- reverent tribute to the disting-uished 
men who have done so much for us and for humanity. 
It is peculiarly fitting- that this tribute be paid, and 
this reverent and patriotic spirit be invoked, on the 
occasion of the one hundredth anniversary of the 
birth of Bryant — the leader and patriarch of the 
illustrious band whose work has so quickened and 
advanced the literary development of our country, 
and become an imperishable part of the literature of 
our Eing-lish race. Bryant was peculiarly, and in the 
best sense, an American. No man has more strongly 
urged or more strikingly exemplified at once the 
claims of good literature and the virtues of good citi- 
zenship. Especially in his later years, when he was 
active in all civil affairs, life was to him the noblest 
aim, "his manhood better than his verse." He was 
poet and patriot in one. And as in literature his 
work was always dignified, simple, genuine, scorning 
the slightest touch of anything tawdry or meretri- 
cious in his art, so were his political teachings always 
inspiring and uplifting, founded upon the loftiest 
ideals of private and public morality, and working 
always to the end of "nobler manners, purer laws." 
The trickster and the trimmer in politics were as in- 

94 



tolerable to him as the sensationalist or the clown in 
literature. I/acking the sense of humor which was 
so larg-e a saving grace in Holmes and Lowell, who 
could satirize as well as denounce, and laugh at the 
follies which they might not cure, the austere tem- 
perament of Bryant— the patriot politician, the scrup- 
ulous and high-minded journalist, the dignified and 
fastidious poet — would have suffered many a rude 
shock in our later day, when character and attain- 
ments count for so little in public life that the phrase 
''scholar in i^olitics" is used in derision by practical 
politicians of the dominant sort; when journalistic 
enterprise seeks not only for new worlds of patronage 
to conquer but for new depths of degradation to ex- 
plore; when maudlin sentimentalism and vulgar dog- 
gerel make up so large a part of popular current 
poetry. And here, perhaps, is the place to point the 
practical moral for the young men and women of our 
time — a time when both politics and literature are too 
often degraded by the popular tolerance, and even 
the approval, of low aims and ignoble achievements. 
If I might speak one Vi'ord louder than another to the 
students of Knox College, it would be, Keep your 
aims high and your methods clean. Beware of the 
prevalent vulgarity, in politics, in literature, in life. 
Least of all must you expect your work to be high if 
your life is low. Make no sophistical distinction be- 
tween public acts and private morals. Never allow 
the political to be separated from the ethical. Do not 

95 



disassociate literature from life; feel, rather, that 
literature is life, and the best part of life. You must 
be able to feel great thing's before you can express 
them. If you wish to do something worthy in the 
world, seek first to be something worthy in yourself. 
And if, in these and many other things, you need an 
example and an inspiration, you may well look for 
them in the life and teachings of the great poet and 
the good citizen whom you will best honor by making 
his influence vital in your lives. 

A A 



\Z V/ ^jW^vfvc 



Chicago, November 1, 1894 



96 




FROM THK PRESIDENT OF THE 
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN 

Some of Mr. Bryant's poetry will undoubtedly 
live. As in the case of Mr. Lowell, it was a misfor- 
tune to letters that poetry was destined to suffer from 
a divided attention. I think no one can read Mr. 
Lowell's letters without feeling- that it was a great 
loss to poetry and literature that he was obliged to 
work so hard as a college professor. I think also, in 
the case of Bryant, it was a loss to literature that one 
who promised to be our foremost poet felt obliged to 
devote himself to the arduous work of editing a daily 
paper. In saying this I am not insensible to the vast 
service rendered by Mr. Bryant in raising the stand- 
ard of journalism. Possibly his service in this way 
was greater than in any other. All that I mean is 
that his contributions to literature might have been 
far greater and far more important if the Evening 

97 



Post had not for so many years occupied a predomi- 
nant place in his thoug-ht. 

To bring before the people the life and services 
and aspirations of a man like Mr. Bryant at such a 
time as this is a real service in behalf of better 
standards and methods. 

Very traly |Our», 

Madison, Wis., November 1, 1894 



FROM THE PRESIDENT OE 
DARTMOUTH COI,I.EGE 

I can add little to what (as is proved by their 
words at Cuinniing-ton last Aug}ust) Mr. Bryant and 
Mr. Brown will so fitting-ly say to you next Saturdaj'; 
nor need I emphasize the thong-ht you all have antic- 
ipated: that the death of Holmes, occurring- so near 
to the anniversary of Brj^ant's birth, fitting-lj^ if 
pathetically rounds out a significant century in the 
history of American poetry. 

The more I reflect upon the history of our litera- 
ture, the more do I dwell on the fact that, as Irving- 
was the real beg-inner of our literature in prose, so 
Bryant was the first to emerg-e in a larg-e and master- 
ful way as to the leader of our band of true poets. 
He saw the relations of man to the Divine above him 
and to Nature about him, and therefor shared, as an 
orig-inal force, in the g-reat romantic movement 
which, in his early years, so powerfully affected 
Eng-lish verse in two nations; and the depth of his 
thought was equalled by the strength of his word. 

I can never forget the impression of dignified 
reserve, mingled with kindly beneficence, which was 
left by the poet — both bard and sage — a few months 
before his death, when I had occasion to visit him 
with reference to the last poem he contributed to the 
periodical press. Its theme was the birthday of 
Washington, whom Bryant somewhat resembled in 
character and intellectual attitude; and its stately 
lines, themselves written for an anniversary occasion, 
unconsciously portray the poet himself, and are well 
fitted to be read on the day you now observe: 

99 



"Pale is the February sky, 

And brief the mid-day's sunny hours; 
The wind-swept forest seems to sigh 
For the sweet time of leaves and flowers. 

"Yet has no month a prouder day, 
Not even when the summer broods 
O'er meadows in their fresh arraj^, 
Or autumn tints the gflowing- woods. 

"For this chill season now ag-ain 

Bring-s, in its annual round, the morn 
When, greatest of the sons of men, 
Our glorious Washington was born. 

"Lo, where, beneath an icy shield 
Calmly the mighty Hudson flows; 
By snow-clad fell and frozen field 
Broadening, the mighty river goes. 

"The widest storm that sweeps through space, 
And rends the oak with sudden force. 
Can raise no ripple on his face. 
Or slacken his majestic course. 

"This, mid the wreck of thrones, shall live, 
Unmarred, undimmed, our hero's fame, 
And years succeeding years shall give 
Increase of honors to his name." 






Hanover, N. H., October 30, 1894 



100 



FROM MR. PARKE GODWIN 

I answered your first letter several days ago, say- 
ing- that I was preparing- an address on Mr. Bryant 
and could find no time for any elaborate reply to 
your very kind request. I think I said therein also 
that Mr. Bryant's character and services were of a 
kind not easily to be mistaken. He was not only a 
man of g-enius, but a man of the widest sympathies 
and the most spotless conduct. No one ever 
approached him without being- inspired at once by 
respect for his uprigfhtness, and admiration for his 
ability. I hope your commemoration will be in every 
way successful. 






Rosljn, Long- Island, N. Y.. October 2^, 1894 



FROM THE PRESIDENT OF THE 
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN 

In these days, when so many of our young- people 
find themselves captivated by sensuous or sensational 
poetry, or charmed by the fashionable "verses of 
society," I trust your celebration may inspire them 
with a new love for the sane, sincere and serious 
verse of Bryant. 

James B. Angeli, 

Ana Arbor, Mich., November 1, 1894 
101 



FROM THE PRESIDENT OF 
MONMOUTH COLLEGE 

Mr. President, I thank you and those associated 
with you who have made it possible for me to enjoy 
with you the pleasure of this occasion. As I have 
listened to these delig-htf ul exercises replete with his- 
torjs reminiscence, sentiment, poetry and song-, I 
seem to have lived a hundred years in an hour. My 
thoughts have gone back to the birth of our poet, 
almost to the beginning of our government, and re- 
called the great wealth of heritage which the young 
men and women of this generation inherit. It con- 
sists nut so much in its extent of territory, though 
that is great; not so much in the size of its standing 
army, though that is small; not so much in the fertility 
of its soil and the salubrity of its climate, though both 
are unsurpassed; but in the greatness and richness 
of the lives of its men and women, such as the one 
whose birth we celebrate. "We have no Westminster 
Abbey in which their forms are chiseled in marble, 
and their deeds graven with a pen of iron in stone, 
but their names and their deeds are both preserved 
in the history of our free institutions and enshrined 
in the hearts of a grateful people. Their names 
brighten up all the past of our history and throw a 
still, clear light far out into the prophetic history of 
our future. 

Just as the young men and women of the present, 
of whom I see so many in this large and representa- 
tive audience, iinbibe the spirit of greatness and 
goodness as lived by the great and the good of our 
country, will her future be filled with the realizations 
of hope. 

Not so many women as men can be recalled who 
have made their lives sublime, though there may be 

102 



more but less conspicuous; yet, if I am not mistaken, 
the spirit of the times is changing-, opportunities are 
opening- and invitations are extending, as never 
before, to the young- -w^omen to fit themselves for a 
more prominent part in the future; and when another 
hundred years of our history shall have been written, 
the co-education of the sexes shall have been more 
than vindicated in the equal number of illustrious 
men and women entitled to recognition on such an 
occasion as this. 

J. B. McMiCHAEiv 



FROM THE PROFESSOR OF 
I^ITERATURE AT I,OMEARD UNIVERSITY 

We owe the tribute of gratitude to Bryant as the 
poet who gave utterance to that love of nature which 
is instinctive in the American people. His ancestors 
had known the toil and struggle of the pioneer life, 
and by their daily experience had gained that pas- 
sion for the beauty of the outside world which came 
to him as a precious heritage. As our first great art 
was landscape art, so our first great poetry was the 
poetry of nature. Bryant voiced the feelings of the 
people, but with a deep insight and truth that made 
him the interpreter of nature to other minds. And 
among all the flowers which he loved so well, and 
which he sought so diligentlj-- in the fields and in the 
woods, there was not one more beautiful than the 
white flower of his own blameless life. 

John CIvArence Lee 

103 



IfROM THE PRESIDENT OE 
CLARK UNIVERSITY 

I am g-lad you are to honor the memory of Bryant. 
I know of no other poet since Wordsworth who can 
be called a lover of nature in so hig-h a sense. He 
said, you remember, "Every one is by nature a nat- 
uralist." Believing-, as I do, that not only science, 
but art, literature and relig-ion have their ethnic root 
in the love of nature, which city life and the material 
utilization not only of her forces but her beauty, 
seems to be slowly exting-uishing- among children and 
youth, it is indeed a fit time to celebrate one whose 
early life drew all its strength from nature. Her 
laureate Bryant is becoming more and more in this 
country. I am, with sincere regard 



(^ ^4^^^ fluXX 



Worcester, Mass., October 2"), 1891 

FROM THE PRESIDENT OF 

LAKE FOREST UNIVERSITY 
It would give me great pleasure to join with oth- 
ers in your celebration of the one hundredth anniver- 
sary of the birth of the poet Bryant. However, my 
engagements will prevent a personal expression of 
my sentiments. It is a splendid thing to do honor to 
the great men who have helped to make our literature, 
and also to impress their greatness upon students. I 
wish that all students who are forming their intel- 
lectual and moral fiber would get into it much of such 
strength and beauty as characterized the poet in 
whose honor you are meeting. 

John M. Coui^ter 

Lake Forest, 111 , November 1, 1894 
104 



"Cbfa SSooft was ffirintcb 
for TLbC3C lperi5on3 



James C. Ay res 

A. Edward Anderson 

Mrs, James C. Burns 

Katherine Blanchard Baffby 

Edg-ar A. Bancroft 

Charles P. Bascom 

Newton Bateman 

Eug"ene C. Bates 

Frances Bag-by Blades 

Clara Parsons Bourland 

A. W. Boyden 

Mrs. John P. Boydston 

John H. Boys 

Edwin R. Brown 

E. Lester Brown 

D. S. Brown 
Walter L. Brown 
James S. Barkman 
John Howard Br3'ant 
Mrs. W. H. Bryant 
Mrs. L. S. Bryant 
Arthur Brj-ant 

Guy A. Bryant 
Lyda Burkhalter 
Mrs James C. Burns 
Harriet Manville Calkins 
Mrs Georg-e W. Cone 
Mrs. A. L. Craig- 
Josephine A. Mitchell Carey 
John White Chadwick 
Mary L. Cook 
Kate Chase 

Clarance Gordon Coulson 
John Pearsons Cushing- 
Georg-e B. Churchill 
Sherman L. Cox 

E. R. Drake 

Louis Stanie3- Du Bois 

Annie Bateman Ewart 

Mrs. B. F. Everly 

May Fisk 

Grace Carr Fahnestock 

Mary Finch 

Jennie C. Franklin 



Frank Taylor Fulton 

Alida E. Finch 

John Hig-ham 

Carrie Alma Haas 

Samuel Hoffhcimer 

Francis M. Hag-ue 

Jessie Rosette Holmes 

Anna C. Hicks 

Minnie L- Holmes 

Mary C. Hurd 

Bessie Bateman Geissinger 

Georg-e Gallarno 

H. Grace Goldsmith 

Charles C. George 

Janet Greig- 

Mary E. Gettemy 

Jean McAdam Greig" 

Ella P.Gilbert 

Aug-ustus Griswold 

Richard Watson Gilder 

S. L. Guthrie 

Delia Sheldon Jackson 

Guy Hallett Johnson 

Jeremiah W, Jenks 

Mrs. Parle}- M. Johnson 

Johns Hopkins University 

Donnizetta Adelaide Jones 

Mrs. S. Hallett Johnson 

Mrs. C. F. King 

P. J. Kuntz 

Oscar Monroe Lanstrum 

James Lewis 

Almedia Laurson 

Clara Kingsbury Lewis 

Charles A. Laurson 

George A, Lawrence 

Lizzie Lee 

Henry E. Losey 

James H. Losey 

Enoch B. Linn 

Harriet Ferris McLaughlin 

Sarah S. Mathews 

Sara M. McCall 

Alexander A. McCormick 



105 



Marg-aret C. McCornack 

J. B. McMichael 

J. C. McMichael 

T. H. McMichael 

W. J. McMichael 

Lola Maddox 

Edward W. Manny 

William S. Marquis 

Mrs. A. W. Marshall 

Anne Mathews 

James G. Needham 

Ida Nichols 

John H. Olds 

Brvant Olds 

Everett Ward Olmsted 

Emily Ward Olmsted 

Mrs. George A. Plimpton 

Leah Irene Pearsall 

D. K. Pearsons 

Peoria Public Library 

Albert J. Perry 

Elizabeth Phillips 

W. A. Phillips 

John W. Plain 

Lee S. Pratt 

Mabel Sisson Priestly 

J. F. Percy 

Mrs. E. Robinson 

Mrs. Henry T. Rainey 

Mrs. H. W. Rawson 

Mrs. Austin Reeves 



Mrs. Tracy Reeves 

Bowman F. Reinmund 

Delia Maud Rice 

William R. Robbins 

Josephine Robinson 

Elizabeth A. Rugar 

Edna Sapp 

Martha Scott 

Mary Scott 

William E. Simonds 

Henry McCall Sisson 

Mrs. D. H. Smith 

Mrs. E. O. Smith 

Mrs. Gilmore T. Smith 

J. T. Stewart 

Albert P. Stockwell 

H Sundquist 

Helen I. Tenney 

E. Susan Tibbits 

John Watson-Taylor 

Byron Weston 

Mar3' A. Wiggins 

W. Irving Way 

Martha Farnham Webster 

A. B. E. Wenneberg 

Samuel Weyler 

Walter L. Wiley 

Thomas R. Willard 

E. P. Williams 

Frank M. Wing 




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Aecessiorrs Oivisir.. | 



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